David Allen has a good article in Businessweek on Time Management in the Age of Social Media.
Here is an especially interesting observation:
The challenge is that each of those social media involvements can represent another virtual in box, with an implicit assumption that you should think about and deal with what lands there. If “processing” those additional streams of input is simply a matter of scanning to see what’s of interest to you, that may not take much time; and you can simply drop in and out on a whim. That’s no different than channel surfing, other than the added seductiveness of interactive rabbit trails to pursue.
But if you are expected—by yourself or others—to be more familiar with the content, or to contribute and respond to content directly, you’re going to have to be judicious in how you manage your social media commitments. It’s not as innocuous as another cable station, unless you have specifically downgraded your expectations of how you’re going to be involved.